DVD Pausing issue on playback

[DVDHeadache]

Hi All,

I have produced a DVD using Encore CS4 which contains a series of animations with four films in between. This starts with an intro movie which plays to a first section (menu). The first screen has a previous, next and play button on it. If the next button is clicked another animation will play taking you to the next menu. If a previous button is clicked it will play a reverse of the aniamtion taking you to the previous section. The creative gives you a seemless looped journey around four menu screens.

All of these aniamtions are separate timelines within the encore project. On burning the DVD i am getting pauses in playback of the animations. These seem to be approx 3 seconds before the end of each animation.

I need to get rid of these pauses, so any help would be appreciated.

Are they due to the way it has been authored?

Thanks in advance for you time. I hope it all makes sense.

[SLK001]

Three seconds sounds rather high, but a pause between menu selections is normal. The three seconds may be due to the way you authored, but you have provided too few details to properly analyze.

[DVDHeadache]

Hi SLK001

Many thanks for your post. The pause is not just before the menu as i understand this would surely be the DVD scanning ( i know i may be very wrong). It seems to be around 3 seconds before the end of the animation e.g. playing, pausing then playing the rest of the animation. It does this on each animation before it gets to the next menu.

What else would you need to know to help me more?

Thanks again.

[SLK001]

All your menus have to be in the same VMG on the DVD. Menus are really not seamless - there is a noticeable delay on a menu change. Trying to make them appear seamless is a futile effort. As a sub-menu is selected, there will be a "freeze" of the present menu video while the DVD read head changes position, then a "resume" on the lead-in or lead-out.

Look at a commercial DVD that has moving menus and note how these producers accomplish what you are attempting. If you look closely, you will see the menu change delays.

[DVDHeadache]

Hi SLK001, i think you are misunderstanding me. I understand that there are pauses on menus, i am not a newbie to this. These pauses are not happening at this point, they are within the intro movie before reaching a menu and also in the movies between sub menus. They do not happen when the DVD is scanning, they happen while a movie is playing.

Does that clear things up at all?

[SLK001]

Does that clear things up at all?

No - in fact, it really muddies things up.

Why don't you write up a flow chart to try to better explain where the pause is occuring.

I.e, INTRO > MAIN MENU > JUMP FORWARD MENU > MENU2 > MAIN MOVIE - the pause occurs <HERE> when I do <THIS>.

[johns0]

How does the dvd folder play on your hard drive before you burn it?Could be the blank dvds that you use,if they are memorex,tdk or similar store brands then it's due to poor grade cmc media,try better brands such as verbatim made in singapore or taiyo yuden.

[DVDHeadache]

OK, good idea, thanks.

Intro(pause occurs here)Intro finishes > Menu1 > animation to next menu(pause occurs here)animation to next menu finishes > Menu 2 etc etc.

There are four menu points where a film to watch can be selected, in between each menu there is an animation to the menu and from it.

[guns1inger]

Is the pause on the last frame of the clip ? I still believe it is the player shifting from the end of the title to the next menu. There really isn't much you can do about it. If Encore lets you control how the titles are written to the disc you can make sure that everything is written in the playback order to reduce the need to scan across the disc on playback, but otherwise the pauses will be down to the player and outside your control.

[SLK001]

Did you set more than one cell in each of your menus? It sounds as if there are "chapters" in your menus (there aren't, tho - it isn't possible).

Note that I have never used Encore, nor do I know how it operates.

I HAVE seen instances during a movie where the CHAPTER END ACTION was mapped to THE NEXT ACTUAL CHAPTER (ie, chapter 1 end action was mapped to chapter 2 and so on). When it is mapped this way, a player will pause briefly while it goes and finds where the next chapter resides. The proper way to do this is to NOT map chapter end actions when the next chapter is desired. The default action for a player that has no end mapping is to "continue".

Menus can have multiple "cells" and I am thinking that if they are mapped like above, there might be a pause.

[DVDHeadache]

Hi gunsl1nger

The pause is not on the last frame of the clip. I understand that players pauses due to DVD scanning. This is happening in the middle of the mpeg before the menu. I can only assume from this that Encore has encoding issues. I will perhaps encode to mpeg before bring all my files into encore, failing that ill get a new piece of quthoring software!!!

If anyone has experience pausing in their footage when using encore please let me know if you found a solution.

[DVDHeadache]

Ok, so the latest is....

I have rebuilt the DVD on a local drive, this was being created over a network. I have also tried encoding the files to m2v before import to Encore. I have also tried taking looping video out of the menus (to eradicate any pauses that may occur from here), but i am still getting the same issue.

I have played the DVD on PC, OSX VLC, DVD player and even the Xbox without issue. MY issue is with Apples DVD Player only!! Whether I am playing this as a DVD or a folder off the hard drive i am getting stuttering and up to 4 second pauses in my animations, but not in the main films.

My animations were created in After Effects and exported as .mov. The films are PRO RES .movs.

My next attempt will be to render the AE files as PRO RES to see if i can sort this issue.

If you have any ideas on getting round stutters in DVD player then they would be warmly welcomed!!!!

[DVDHeadache]

Ok. The pausing lay with Encore. I have rebuilt this DVD with DVD Studio Pro and the issues are gone. I hope this Thread helps someone out in the future struggling with Encore and its subtle issues!!!

Thanks to everyone for your input.